Year || 503 Season || Fall Temp || 35℉ (℃) - 69℉ (℃) Weather || The iron grip of Summer has slowly faded into the gentler Fall embrace. The morning dew frosts over in the early morning hours and melts by the time the sun hits high in the sky. Many of the trees have traded their lush, vivid green for a more suitable array of red and orange hues. But don't blink, for Winter's cold embrace is fast upon Fall's heels.

"Are there lines she's crossing? Should she toe them or touch them with a pole and stay away wholly? But to avoid such a storm he offers, such a taste of life; to withhold herself from the chance to taste starlight, to love satin and silk and swallow pomegranate seeds not yet offered... She should be stronger." — Moira in Small as a wish in a well

A party in which he was not himself. It was the best kind of party, Toro thought, because in it he could be the strange gilded man with horns of fabric and dripping jewels, filigree twisting into a soldier’s breastplate into silken shimmering fabric into the white shine of his shaven neck. He looked dashing, must have, because everyone looked at him at least once. If you weren’t worth looking at, you didn’t get looked at. Such is the way of things.

He felt very self absorbed on this particular evening, and oh-so-proud was he, floating between the fabric walls and dancing through the dreamers’ music. The white stallion thinks perhaps there are one thousand performers and each in a different corner of the palace, but then there is a drink here and a drink there and he hardly thinks at all. Floating in the headspace of hot-air honeysuckle and whatever delightful thing sloshed in this latest flute, it was of no surprise that he stumbled into a fellow partygoer unawares. ”Oh, sorry,” he mumbled.

Isra did not choose a mask from the table where the others sat, empty-eyed and calling. For hours she had poured magic over wood and rock, gemstone and fabric. Each mask on the table and each pool of satin was made by magic, her magic. Still none of the costumes on that table came from all the things twisting, alive and hungry inside her soul.

In the end it was Fable that designed her outfit by showing her his memories of what the inside of his egg looked like. So Isra had dawned pools of burlap across her body and tied mesh around her face like a blindfold. Once every scrap of fabric left covered her body she let her her magic tangle with the thoughts of the young dragon, until art poured over the rough fabric like pale, molten gold.

Her body, as she walks through the crowds seems alive with gold and pearl-shine and moon-glow. Fabric pools over her like slow, forest streams and each step she takes is another discovery of art. First there's amethyst ink shifting across the silk on her shoulder like dragon wings. Then there's only gold and silver, plain enough that she's nothing more than another gilded mortal in the press of bodies. And when she lingers in a shadow, she almost seems more like a dying, faded star than a unicorn.

Fable is almost nothing more than another sculpture of fabric draped across her back, for he's tangled in the nets of silk like a trapped sea-creature. His eyes are heavy with sleep and gluttony (she never knew a dragon could eat more than his weight in fish) and his wings ripple loosely across Isra's sides. This is not his world but their bond it still too young and fresh for her to be without him.

Not yet. She tells herself to drown out the guilt. Later when he's older I'll leave him to the sea.

Never. Fable answers back and his thoughts are tinged with colors of dark blue and white. They scroll like a story across Isra's eyelids as she blinks.

Both of them are so lost to each other that at first they hardly notice that another horse has bumped them at all. Isra is slow to lift her eyes, slower to dive beneath the shrouds of glitz on the stallion to see the horse below the mask. But when she does her eyes spark with joy and she forgets all about guilt and ticking clocks.

“Toro.” His name comes out like another whisper of satin against their flesh, another secret that only will last for a night.

His mind is slow to register the familiar voice but when it does he shies, tripping backwards, ungainly with drink. ”I-I-Isra!” He’s not quite comprehending the cascades of color, the dripping ink stains, the gold, the gold, the gold (move on) the - the what is that on her back, the setting change, her kindness enough to pierce through his thoughts. Toro gathers himself up, rather like a mistress (discovered) running out of the bedroom with half her clothes on, or at least covering the important parts, you know, and he says, ”Fine dress you have. And lovely…thing. On your back. Very nice.” He bows to her sloppily, golds and whites and filigree sliding down and around his form, though the twining metal is more stable than he, than his decorated horns, his form dips and he slides back up like the best kind of snake, an ophiotaurus, perhaps, and just as impressive (no doubt).

He feels his mind slosh sideways and he takes a sip of the drink he keeps floating so precariously beside him; whatever its color or taste he wasn’t exactly certain now but it served a purpose that was not culinary delight. Not anymore, anyway. ”How’ve you been? Gods giving anybody here a run for their money?” Yes, probably, he had a vague idea of something like that but it skipped when he started talking and - well, it was gone now, so, that was all he had to say.

Isra of the molten change
"Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”

It's almost an instinctual reaction to turn the slick stone at Toro's hooves to coarse wood the moment he starts to tumble and shy. Watching him she's not sure what she's supposed to do other than wait (besides maybe cry or laugh). So she only smiles a strange look and stares until he's still enough to speak and sip deeply of his drink.

Isra's glad she's only had water tonight. Part of her thought it was wiser. Another part of her was worried that any of her drinks could be laced by a ghost. Even decked in gold and wealth with a dragon on her back she still doesn't feel completely safe in her own castle. (she still wonders what sort of unicorn that makes her)

“Thank you.” She whispers the word with a smile, wondering if all their gold is loud enough to drown out the sound of her voice. When she bows it's steady and graceful and she wishes briefly that her satin was armor and steel. She wonders what he would have thought of her then. “This is Fable.” The young dragon crawls down her side to move towards Toro. His wings are spread with worry and curiosity.

Fable is young enough to still be enthralled by shiny things and stallion with horns upon their heads like gods. There are very few things in the sea with such horns.

She closes the distance between them again, mostly to protect the two of them from being bumped into again. Perhaps another collision would send him tumbling instead of shying. And of course she did not heal him just to have him wounded at her own party. Her laugh, when Toro speaks again, takes her by surprise.

Oh she longs to be as free at him, as reckless and hazy with drink.

“I've been well. It was more birds made of thunder and the sea that came for us. The gods brought little of themselves here.” Her heart cracks again in her chest, brittle with that old betrayal and her molten anger that is rising every day. Novus is making something less gentle and fearful out of her. Night by night she's changing, like a wraith, like a monster.

“How are your lungs?” She asks with a smile because tonight she doesn't want to change.

The ground changes beneath him and it’s almost enough to send him spinning again on its own - magic - magic? What else - but he does not know magic as others in this world do; El Toro is utterly unfamiliar with any kind but telekinesis (and that was something to get used to) and there is not quite enough alcohol to cover it up.

Toro nods at her thanks; lolling his head in a tilt to get a better look at Fable.”Nice to meet you...Fable...” How fitting, for the woman who told him stories as he died. How fitting, for a woman who told him stories as she kept him alive. But he does not think these things, really, and instead stares at the dragon for a while, even while Isra speaks. She always sounds like poetry.

”Thunder…birds? Funny. We had…snow…elk. Ice deer. Something. Got all ready for a battle and they ran away. No glory. Just a little valor, I guess…”

She asks him about the thing he is trying to avoid so he takes another drink.

”Better. Fine now, I think. Good. Mostly. They’re good.” Sometimes he can still feel them crinkling like parchment between his ribs. ”Thanks. For that.” He looks away and takes another drink, again. His cracked opal eyes fall to the floor and he says, ”What did the ground do there?”

Isra with strange magic
“There is no law stronger than that of magic.”

Fable, like all young creatures, preens under the attention (and he's new enough that he never lacks for it). He meets Toro, gaze for gaze, and tilts his head to better watch the bright stallion. He, of course, is still learning to understand the language of horses. Isra still talks to him in thoughts and words written out in ocean water instead of ink. But he knows enough to recognize his name even in another accent.

He lifts a wing and swoops it downwards in something like a bow. Isra can hear him say, in the sea they share, I like him. She laughs and the sound matches almost perfectly with the music floating around them like spiced smoke.

All she can feel is relief when he talks about the battle that never happened. She wonders if Eik was there, she wonders why he didn't tell her about it. And then she wonders what it is that they really have shared with each-other besides love, and soul, and forever.

Are words even important then?

Isra's too lost in thought to say anything about the Elk and battles that never should have almost happened. If she did, if she really thought about it, she would feel another crack in her heart to think that their gods have betrayed them all. Isra has no use in her life for gods, not anymore.

Toro asks about her magic and it takes her by surprise to realize that he is the only one who ever has. It worries her, that she never thought to ask what this beast of power in her heart was (or to wonder if it's good or evil or something in-between). “I don't know what to call it other than magic. Eik taught me how to find it.” But she's starting to go down a dark path, a place full of teeth and love and grayness. So she smiles and winks at him and pretends that her heart doesn't have a million cracks running through it. “If you could change the world around you, what would you make?”

Maybe Toro didn't find his gory in battle, but tonight she could help him find a little in the world around them.

YOU MAY BE THE LAST TO BELIEVE / THAT THE STRONG SHOULD STAND UP FOR THE WEAK

Toro smiles lazily at the little dragon; a bow is a bow in all languages and he thinks it funny that the creature should know such a thing so young. Isra laughs and it makes him smile more - there is a beautiful thing that comes from her and it makes him nervous and soft at once.

She is quiet as he speaks, but then she mentions an ”Eik” and Toro recalls a snowy and uncomfortable walk with a snowy and uncomfortable man. (Whether that was himself or Eik will remain unanswered, to Toro, anyway.) ”That was nice of him,” is all Toro says, because little else was notable of that strange day except how he felt and that is certainly not something he has ever sought to discuss.

”If you could change the world around you, what would you make?”

He tries to think for a moment, in all his hazy warmth and alcohol, and in a brief and lucid second he says, ”Somewhere the weak could go to be strong,” and then he thinks maybe that is not something for magic that turns marble to wood to make. He laughs sharply, empties his glass, and says, ”Or another drink.”

Isra moving into the crowd
“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”

Toro takes her down a strange path. She travels down his words and through the glitz covering both of them. Isra travels back to the sea, where the weak do not die. When she blinks everything is black and dark and her lips taste not like wine but like salt. Around her leg that rusted chain quivers finely but the song it sings is drowned in the quiet roar of the crowd.

Isra wants to tell him that he's already in such a place. She wants to tell him that chains make weak things strong (or it kills them). There are a hundred words of metal and teeth hanging on her lip. She could tell him a million places in which weak things are made to be strong. Fable flashes her an image of a shell and she understands that hope, cages and eggs all create strength from hollow space.

Instead of all the things she wants to say, she only closes the distance between them. She takes his cup with a clever and quick pull of her inherent magic. Then she's brushing their shoulders together.

Fable is thinking about tugging on some of the golden fabric covering Toro. Isra stops him.

The marble at her hooves is already turning to sapphire and she thinks Toro might have had enough strangeness for one night.“Follow me.” She says before she dissolves into the crowd, hoping he's motivated at the very lest to follow his cup.